Page 68 of Bleed for Me

“How do you do it?” she whispered with her back still toward me.

My eyebrows dipped in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sighing, she turned to face me, her warm breath fluttering against the side of my face. “You act like everything’s fine, even after all you’ve done. The things you said to Valentine…did you mean that, or was that just a defense mechanism?”

My jaw ached as my teeth slid against each other. “I didn’t come here for pillow talk. We didn’t even fuck to warrant it. If that’s what you’re looking for, Seven’s room is right down the hall.”

She blew out a breath of frustration but was smart enough to keep her mouth shut. What did she think this was? That I’d become some shiny white knight? No. Everything I’d done so far to protect her had been for my own benefit. She was too naïve for her own good. Without me or Archer coming to her aid, she’d probably already be dead, and not by her own hand.

Once Rosalie managed to fall asleep, I allowed myself to crash, too. She’d been royally fucked. There was no way she was waking up before me.

I awoke to my breath leaving my body, my oxygen depleting within my brain as I tried to figure out what the hell was happening. It was hard to see anything through the blanket of darkness that surrounded the room. For a moment, I thought it was merely a panic attack. I hated sleeping in unfamiliar places. But as the haze slowly disintegrated from my brain, I realized, someone was choking me.

Not someone.

Rosalie.

Had I really underestimated her? Was she truly a wolf in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be the frail innocent girl that needed protection? If I hadn’t dipped my fingers along her pussy, I wouldn’t have believed she was a virgin. Her grip was strong around my throat, her palm crushing my windpipe. How could someone as small as her be as strong as she was?

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, and the moon peeking through the window highlighted her face. If she wasn’t stealing my breath from my lungs, I might have gasped. Her pupils were gone, nothing but white staring back at me. Like she wasn’t herself, trapped within her mind as the darkness swallowed her whole. It did that to me sometimes, too.

I pried her fingers from around my throat with ease. She might have been strong for a girl, but I was much stronger. My heart thundered against my ribcage. How did I make her snapout of it? In her dazed state, she reached for me again, but this time, I wrapped my hand around her throat and slammed her against the mattress, positioning her body beneath mine. It didn’t work. Her nails bit into my bare arms, pain slicing through the skin. With my other hand I slapped her across the face. Hard.

She gasped, her body bucking beneath me. Slowly, her pupils dropped back into the center of her eyes. It was fucking sinister.

“Did you just fucking hit me?” she growled. “While I was sleeping?”

A breath of relief whooshed out of me, and I released my grip on her throat before rolling off of her, not even wanting to think about how good her body felt beneath mine. She was still wearing Seven’s shirt. That thought left a bitter aftertaste in my mind.

“You’re the dumb bitch who attacked me,” I shot back, my chest heaving with adrenaline.

She was silent for a few moments, her breaths coming in sharp and fast from being startled out of whatever that had been. I’d never seen anything like it before, and that was saying something. “What?” she finally asked. “That’s not possible…”

“Well, it happened.” I paused, glancing over at her again. “Were you dreaming?”

“I was having a nightmare,” she admitted. “I have them every night. Why?”

I shrugged, shaking my head. “Nothing. Go back to sleep. And don’t attempt killing me again,” I warned. “Next time, I’ll snap you out of it with my dick inside you.”

She didn’t bother responding. I waited for her breathing to grow heavy before allowing myself the chance to drift off again. Crazy ass bitch.

Rosalie was still sleeping when I woke up. Her blonde hair fanning out around her. She looked peaceful, like she hadn’t just attempted to murder me in my sleep mere hours ago. My gaze drifted down her body, and my breath hitched at the sight before me. The shirt had managed to slide up over her hips, either from me slamming her down on the bed, or from her restlessly tossing and turning. Her ass was round, bigger than I would have expected. Her thighs were thick, helping to hide her pussy from my prying eyes.

It had been a long time since a girl had even come close to making my dick hard. Options were limited here, and I was more of a one and done type of guy. Didn’t kiss, and didn’t eat pussy. Sex was a transaction, and I made sure they knew it before indulging them. Most of the time, anyways. It depended on the situation.

My hand came down hard on her ass and she startled awake with a yelp.

“What the hell, Jordan?” she snapped, scrambling into a sitting position, doing her best to cover anything she didn’t want me to see with the shirt she was wearing. She glared at me, staring me down like she was fantasizing about murdering me the next chance she got. Been there, done that. Only mildly impressed. “You don’t get to barge into my room, babysit me, and then wake me up like?—”

I rolled my eyes. “Breakfast time,” I clipped, cutting her sentence short. “You might want to shower first. You smell like sloppy sex and your cunt has a nasty twang to it.”

Her cheeks turned pink, and it took everything not to grin. I was lying through my teeth. I couldn’t smell her, but shedidneed a shower. It looked like a rat had made a home within her hair, there was dry blood on her skin, and dirt on her palms. She shot me a glare, the flush still coloring her neck and face from my latest comment. She scrambled off the bed and walked over to her closet, flinging the door open.

Once she’d gathered the clothes she wanted to wear, she turned to face me again. “I don’t need a babysitter,” she snapped, an edge of annoyance to her voice.

It was interesting watching her come out of her shell. When she first got here, she’d been so quiet and timid. Slowly, she was breaking out of that shell and hardening into something more. Maybe she’d have a chance of surviving this place, after all.

“Tell that to Archer and Seven.” I leaned my back against the wall, my eyes trailing down her body.

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